'Upsets Me Beyond Belief': Man Outraged After His Service Dog Is Attacked By 2 Other Dogs Inside Christiana Mall
NEWARK, Del. (CBS)-- A mall in Newark, Delaware is getting attention and it's not because of tax-free shopping. A service dog was attacked by two other dogs earlier this week and now the service dog's owner worries he'll have to spend thousands of dollars to retrain it.
Frank Bicking of Thorofare, New Jersey, suffers from seizures that his dog, named Beauty, can detect before they actually happen. But he says Beauty has changed since the incident at the mall on Dec. 22.
"To see her afraid and shaken upsets me beyond belief," he said.
Bicking and Beauty were walking by a kiosk at the mall when he says two small dogs from the kiosk, who were not on leashes, started attacking his dog.
"All of a sudden two of the dogs were on her back leg, one of them ran under and started biting her on her belly. She never fought back because she's trained to never show aggression," he said.
Bicking says he used his cane to get the dogs off Beauty. That is when he says the kiosk owner yelled that his dogs were also service animals.
Bicking doesn't believe they are.
"These dogs were unleashed. They had no control over them," he said.
Christiana Mall management is now banning the attacking dogs and is closing the kiosk.
Meantime, Bicking has noticed other times people claiming their pets as service animals when he suspects otherwise.
He has a message for those people.
"By doing what he did, he's giving those people who follow the law a hard time in themselves because people won't support them either," Bicking said.
Eyewitness News spoke with the kiosk operator over the phone, he said he was cited and fined by Delaware Animal Services.